Under Norwegian law, data is not protected, hence it cannot be owned. If you have access to some data, by all means, it's "yours" (under Norwegian jurisdiction).
Phone book I get but recipes? Technically speaking, how is a recipe different then technical instructions on how to build a specific microchip? The latter not being considered as just 'data'.
Not that I think recipes should be copyrighted, the question is more for how legally they are different.
If you write a manual for making a TSMC microchip that presentstion is copyrighted.
It may also contain patented and trademarked things.
But the process itself of
- get sand
- mold
- make wafer
Is not copyrighted.
This is called idea - expression.
You can’t copyright the idea but you can copyright the expression. (It’s why recipes have stories about grandma. If someone scrapes that story that’s copyright infringement)
You an definitely patent a recipe for most manufacturable items. You can't copyright it.
As an extension, you can copyright an operation manual, but not the "general" expression of the pure operational steps themselves. Someone else could rewrite the operational manual "from scratch".
Then how do software patents work? Aren't they mostly general expressions of steps used by computers? I can see that actual code would be copyrightable but how is it patentable?
- Copyright: "I" created $thing. I have the right to distribute copies of that exact thing. I may grant others the right to distribute $thing I've made.
- Patent: I have written down $process. No one else before me wrote down this process (that the patent office has record of.) This process makes a thing. No one else has the right to use that process unless I agree to it for about 20 years in the US.
And for good measure:
- Trademark: I sell $thing under $brand. No one else has the right to sell similar $things with a $brand that sounds like mine.
What about the precise configuration of 1s and 0s that just happen to induce playback of human-interpretable audio and video when interpreted by specific software? What about the digital representation of a film doesn't count as "data"?
Well, that's exactly it. You won't find it anywhere in Lovdata, because data isn't covered by Norwegian law. You can essentially find data protection two places, under Opphavsrett (Åndsverksloven), the general copyright law, which only cover creative work, and database systems.
Interestingly, it's not clear that seismic imaging of a mountain (say) is copyrightable, but if you point your camera to that same mountain, it's suddenly creative, and therefore protected.
